July 2006 Archives

"Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

All this is interesting from a technological point of view, and as a practical tool to help defend your online privacy and anonymity from criminals, terrorists and police states.

However, despite "several hundred thousand" users of worldwide, the size and distrubution of the "Tor cloud" of volunteer donated Tor server bandwidth is worryingly small.

Today there are just over 300 servers in the "cloud", but major portions of the the worldwide internet are unsupported e.g. there appear to be more Tor servers in Communist China than in Japan and South Korea (with their huge numbers of internet users and available high speed bandwidth) combined.

Even more embarrassingly, the United Kingdom currently sports fewer than 30 Tor servers i.e. fewer than the city of Berlin in Germany does ! Obviously the "location" is based on the whois information pertaining to theregistered offices of the ISP, but there are plenty of other Tor servers in the rest of Germany.

Give something back to the internet community, and do something to protect your own privacy and freedom, as well as that of others, and run a Tor server.

You do not need to be a *nix guru in order to configure a Tor server: the new Vidalia (a type of onion) GUI front end configuration tool and network map display, makes things as easy as setting up , say, Internet Connection Sharing, on a Windows XP box.

It is hoped that the pledge will put people off buying stolen phones
Around 80% of mobile phones will be blocked on all five UK networks within 48 hours of being reported stolen in future, industry leaders have pledged.

Why did the BBC (and the other mainstream media) not bother to ask why this has not already happened ?

This was all promised back in 2002, i.e. 4 years ago, when the Home Office rammed through the useless Mobile Telephones (Re-programming) Act 2002 which made it a criminal offence to re-programme a mobile phone handset's International Mobile Equipment Idenifier (IMEI), and controversially, even made possession of "dual use" equipment i.e. a computer and a mobile phone serial or USB cable, a criminal offence.

A Metropolitan Police Authority report concluded in 2003, that in London, which is where most such street muggings involving mobile phones occur, the effect of the legislation, and of the alleged "national stolen phone blacklist database" was that it "cannot be shown to have impacted on street crime levels.":

The BBC reports that the "Red Mercury " trial has resulted in the acquittal of all the defendants, on all the charges.

Trio cleared of red mercury plot

Three men have been cleared of trying to procure a substance which police claimed could have made a "dirty bomb".

They were arrested in September 2004 after trying to buy "red mercury" from an undercover reporter.

But Roque Fernandes, 44, Abdurahman Kanyare, 53, both of Edgware, and Dominic Martins, 45, of Stanmore, had denied three terror-related charges.

They denied being interested in a radioactive or toxic substance and claimed they had been tricked.

The court heard how Mazher Mahmood, better known as the News of the World's "fake sheikh", played the part of a Muslim, called Mohammed, who claimed to have nearly a kilogram of red mercury which he was looking to sell.

[...]

The three men were acquitted of two charges of trying to set up funding or property for terrorism.

They were also found not guilty of one charge of conspiracy to possess "a highly dangerous mercury-based substance" for the purposes of terrorism.

Can there be better proof that the tabloid newspapers, in this case the News of the World, have undue influence with the Labour Government, especially the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service ? When are they goiing to stop insulting our intelligence with utter rubbish like this, or the ludicrous Osmium Tetroxide "threat" to the Tube, or the "No ricin" plot ?

The Goverment, who have ample scientific advice to hand if only they would bother to pay attention, should be actively debunking such misleading "climate of fear" stories, instead of allowing them to progress through the police and criminal prosecution systems. However, the NuLabour Government is failing the public in this duty.

This paper sets out for consultation proposals to amend the Data Protection Act to allow for custodial sanctions for those convicted of offences under section 55 of the Act. The consultation is aimed at the general public and relevant organisations in the UK.

Consultation begins on 24 July 2006
Consultation ends on 30 October 2006

Essentially the plan appears to be to raise the the current penalty of a fine, to a possible sentence of up to 2 years in prison.

The 2 year maximum penalty is not sufficient to make these offences Extraditable ones. Where is the "deterrence" to foreign based "phishing" criminals, or, for example, to the abusers of call centres, where UK companies have outsourced them overseas ?

Surely the the penalty should be at least 5 years, so as to make the offence fall withion the remit of the Serious Organsied Crime Agency, and to allow for the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act definition of a Serious Crime (the likleyhood of a first time offender getting a custiodial sentence of 3 years or more) ?

The DCA does not seem to be planning to change the "good faith" defence already in the current legislation.

We are very suspicious that the consultation paper mentions "selling details to journalists", but makes no attempt to strengthen the public's confidence and trust in civil servants, the police and other State employees or sub-contractors.

There should be higher criminal penalties, e.g. 10 years in prison, explicitly set out, to punish petty officials who exceed their authority in demanding or sharing our private data, even if they do not sell it for a profit.
Such abuse by petty officials should be treated as seriously as, for example, counterfeit currency offennces, for the same reason i..e. not so much any actual financial gain, but the matter of bringing the whole system into disrepute, and endangering the wider public trust and confidence in the system as a whole.

Yesterday we commented a bit on the article yesterday, and noted the passing reference to Sir David Normington's "blog".

The Guardian has published a (.pdf) scan of a faxed email apparently "leaked" from the Home Office. N.B. the .pdf scan of a 4 page document is nearly 22Mb in size !

We looked in vain for any UK political blog comment or analysis of what the rest of the supposedly leaked email reveals about the Home Office under John Reid. Obviously with "leaks" to favoured media outlets like The Guardian, or any other major newspaper, it is hard to tell if this is a genuine "whistleblower" leak, or part of the Home Office's spin and disinformation system.

"Unique Identifiers" for the several and variously incompatible manual and IT systems which the Home Office wastes billions on.

The way in which the "handling strategy" for Media spin takes precedence over everything else

The management style of "2 page notes" is also worth thinking about. Is this all there is to Home Office policies ? Does the Home Secretary not bother to read any of the background details to such complicated polices ?

Admittedly a "2 page note" is possibly an improvement on the previous"back of a fag packet" policies which seem to have dominated NuLabour Government thinking.

The Guardian has another set of Home Office leaks revealing the NuLabour fascination with "public shaming", involving "uniforms", and, incredibly the use of the Army

"The HS [home secretary] would like us to to think outside the box for targeting young offenders. He is keen on looking at involving the army to provide structure to young people's lives. Please can you provide a brief explanation of existing punishments/schemes and a recommendation to show how to take this forward," Mr Reid's personal secretary told one of the officials concerned.

He says that the home secretary is very interested in exploring ways of increasing visibility of offenders doing unpaid work in the community such as by wearing uniforms: "Unpaid work would have to be portrayed as penance and contrition, and for them to be seen as genuinely paying back to the community."

The professional Army has, rightly, not wanted to be involved in the social engineering / mind control of feckless "young offenders" since the time that dubious "short sharp shock" policies of previous Conservative Home Secretaries were leaked and spun as political kites, and then dropped.

Just as interesting is the hint that the idea of a blog has penetrated some parts of the Marsham Street kremlin:

The correspondence shows that the Home Office's most senior official, David Normington, has already been told that internal reaction has been negative. "I know from the comments to me in emails and on my blog that there will be some scepticism about whether anything will change," he told staff on Thursday.

In principle, the idea that the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office Sir David Normington has some sort of "blog", with comments, on what is presumably the Home Office's internal intranet, is a welcome one.

Which other senior officials within the Home Office write blogs, or have their staff do so ?

We wonder just how free the demoralised and downtrodden junior civil servants feel about posting frank criticisms of current or planned policies, given how trivial it is for the systems administrators to trace exactly which Home Office computer was used to post a comment to this internal blog ?

Incredibly, despite Home Secretary John Reid announcing today the draft order to proscribe two UK based Islamic extremist groups (BBC report) , and another order to proscribe two aliases of the main Kurdish terrorist group, there is still no ban for any Chechen rebel groups, not even the ones behind the Beslan school massacre.

Why, despite their current armed conflict with British troops in Afghanistan, is the Taliban still not a proscribed terrorist group ?

What sort of a "signal" does the Home Office's continued refusal to ban or proscribe these groups send out ?

What possible, quantitative case is there that numerous criminals are not already being dealt with by these agencies, and that the only way forward is for even more legal powers, which sacrifce the civil liberties and privacy and security of the vast majority of innocent people ?

Why is the Home Office and the Forensic Science Service tainting public confidence in the DNA database, by retaining samples and data on innocent people, including children, and by conducting sneaky and morally dubious research, without people's prior consent ?

There are "excepted purposes" under the Act, but these only apply to the results of DNA analysis, and do not extend to a private sector copy of part of the database, or to the retention of human tissue samples by such a private company.

There also seems to have been FSS research into racial profiling using DNA samples, without individual informed consent, and, presumably, without bothering to collect control samples from the wider population, which has not yet been sucked into the National DNA Database.

According to GeneWatch:

Genetic research on the male Y-chromosome is part of a controversial attempt to predict ethnicity from DNA. This type of research could also inadvertently reveal other genetic characteristics such as a man's risk of infertility.

Again, the Human Tissue Authority should be investigating this unethical secret research.

Dr. Vincent Cable MP, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader and Treasury spokesman, has tabled some Parliamentary Questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown regarding the SWIFT scandal.

The SWIFT scandal calls into question Gordon Brown's supposed anti-terrorist finance plans, announced in his "Bletchley Park Enigma codebreaking effort" speech to the Royal United Services Institute on February 13th 2006.

The risks of "insider dealing" and fraud and the loss of financial confidence, far outweigh the paltry effect on terrorist financing, which the betrayal of the SWIFT data seems to have resulted in.

The Scotsman newspaper has a report about the possible illegality of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera technology, when used as a mass surveillance tool.

The Scotsman
Sat 15 Jul 2006

Number plate cameras may be illegal

Hamish MacDonnel, Scottish Political Editor

POLICE cameras which use automatic number plate recognition could breach human rights legislation, a leading surveillance expert has warned.

Sir Andrew Leggatt, Chief Surveillance Commissioner, urged ministers in Edinburgh and London to bring forward legislation swiftly to ensure the equipment is in line with privacy laws and police are not prevented from using the cameras to provide evidence in court.

[...]

In his annual report, before both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster, Sir Andrew urged ministers to amend the law on both sides of the border to make sure the evidence from the cameras is not challenged in court.

We're just finalising the very last details before sending out a full announcement, but I thought lots of list members might be interested in the forthcoming Scrambling for Safety 8 meeting that FIPR and friends are holding next month. Simon Watkin, Caspar Bowden, Richard Clayton, Brian Gladman, Duncan Campbell, The Earl of Erroll, Ross Anderson, Lord Phillips
of Sudbury and Simon Davies will all be speaking on the two current Home Office RIPA consultations (on government access to decryption keys and the code of practice for government access to phone/Internet usage data).

The (free) event will be held on Monday 14 August from 2-5pm at University College London (Gower Street, WC1).

Full event and registration details to come in the next few days. Hope lots of you can make it!

We have set up two mini-blogs, to help people to read and comment on each section of these two Public Consultations:

Consultation on the Draft Code of Practice for the Investigation of Protected Electronic Information - Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000

The Lords have voted to remove the USA from the "fast track" Extradition Act 2003 Part 2, in an amendment to the Police and Justice Bill.

This will not be law unles and until the Commons agrees, but that is not scheduled to happen until October.

There is meant to be an emergency debate in the Commons tomorrow, to see if this means that pending Extraditions can be halted, but , given the previous vote in the Commons on similar amendments, who knows ?

However, the critical amendments to the "Making, supplying or obtaining articles for use in computer misuse offences" so called "hacker tools" offences, which would prevented the word "liklely" casting doubt on th entire UK IT systems adminstration and computer security software and consultancy industry

Some leading exponents of this are seriously looking to move overseas, should this clause stand unamended.

The Earl of Northesk and the Earl of Errol made extremely strong case, citing, as we have done, the potential economic disaster, but the Government refused to budge.

Given the Home Office's appalling track record with regard to information Technology policy, in every area they meddle in, and even for their in house projects and systems, they should learn somme humility and listen to the professional advice from people in the private sectior and academia who really do know more about these issues than the Home Office lawyers, or the lobbyists from large IT and telecomms companies, who are also seeking to bid for multi-billion pound contracts from the Government, and who do not really represent the whole industry or the internet and computer using public.

Lawyers tend to think of themselves, as being logiical people, but most of them are not as sensitive to the nuances of badly draughted clauses, as the "let's think of all the the possible variants of extreme circumstances" mindset of most computer security experts, who will read the word "likely" in context with the rest of the amendments,. they will then perform their own personal and business risk analysis, and will no longer feel safe in doing business here in the UK, with disasterous results for our economy and for national security.

Both the Earl of Northesk, and the Earl of Errol, withdrew their amendments tonight, although they have promised to return with similar ones at the Report Stage.

Tonight at 9pm the BBC will be showing a documentary "Britain's First Suicide Bombers" which claims some sort of link between the apparent leader of the 7th of July 2005 London suicide bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, and the two suicide bombers who attacked a bar with a bomb in Tel Aviv in Israel, in April 2003: Omar Sharif Khan and Asif Hanif.

We have commented on the extraordinary "brother's keeper" case, which involved forced familial DNA sampling and purely email "evidence" and two trials of the relatives of Omar Sharif Khan, on the thought crime of charge of failing to notify the UK authorities, about a suicide terrorist attack, some time in the future, somewhere in a foreign country, by a close relative. The first trial acquitted one defendant and reached no verdict on the others, and their retrial a year later, the jury unanimously found all of the defendants not guilty.

Another extraordinary feature of this case, is the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's "terrorist finance" bureaucracy and red tape.

Both Omar Sharif Khan and Asif Hanif, were put on the official Bank of England Financial Sanctions list, after they were dead, and they still remain on the current list even today.

Firstly it there could well be the removal of the independent
Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons from the proposed "let's merge five independent inspectorates into one" plan by the Home Office. in an amendment proposed by the formidable Lord Ramsbotham

Then there are some further Government amendments to the controversial sections which amend the Computer Misuse Act, hopefully giving a bit more emphasis on criminal intent with respect to Denial of Service attacks (see below).

Following the publicity for the NatWest 3 bankers, Gary McKinnon, Babar Ahmad and others facing unfair extradition to the USA, the Lords look set to vote to accept the amendments which would, if the Commons agree in October, suspend the US-UK Extradition Treaty, until the US Congress ratifies it on a fully reciprocal basis.

This may or may not be enough of a signal for the Government to halt the current Extraditions to the USA, which they could do, by simply charging these people with their alleged crimes here in the UK, under UK law, which would automatically take precedence over the US extradition requests.

The major part of this Bill is the "Police" part of the proposed legislation, which introduces the powers to merge Police Forces and Police Authorities, and which has already been debated and accepted by the Lords.

The Sunday Times publishes some leaked emails between senior civil servants in the Treasury and the Home Office's Identity and Passport Service, which show how the controversial multi-billion pound National Identity Register and ID Card scheme, has all the hallmarks of previous major Government IT project disasters - no proper business plan or agreed detailed technical design, and lots of political meddling.

These emails, assuming that they are genuine, show that there is still no business case, even after over £30 million of consultancy fees and over 4 years of Home Office work on the project. This business case is not even set to be submitted for approval until March 2007.

This business case should have been available and made public before to inform the debate on the Draft Identity Cards Bill, back in 2004.

There seems to be some sort of plan to bodge together a Temporary National Identity Register so as to be able to pretend to have met the ludicrous time-scale promises made by Tony Blair and his NuLabour Ministers.

However, this means two sets of overlapping procurement processes, as the Temporary NIR will almost certainly be a very different beast from the full system.

This is not the same as a properly planned and costed series of large scale Pilot Schemes, as part of a properly defined project.

This is not the way in which to conduct a successful major IT project !

The NO2ID campaign are, rightly, calling for the Identity cards Act to be repealed:

Some details about the massive Children Index centralised database of 12 million children and their parents and guardians has emerged via a Parliamentary Written Answer Commons Hansard 6 July 2006 : Column 1384W:

However, Lord Ramsbotham, the former Army General and former Chief Inspector of Prisons, made a Speech and moved an Amendment against the Government's plans to abolish and amalgamate 5 different supposedly independent inspectorates, into one bloated, centralised "umbrella organisation:

Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons;

Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary;

Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service;

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the National Probation Service for England and Wales;

This speech was not merely a case of letting the Government Bill have it with both barrels of a 12 bore shotgun, it was repeated salvoes of Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank 120mm Armour Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot depleted uranium kinetic penetrator rounds, which blasted through the pathetic Home Office plan.

The House of Lords currently has two Bills going through their Committee stages which we are trying to keep an eye on.

The controversial Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, does indeed appear to be set to lose Clause 3 which would have allowed Law Commission reports "with or without amendments" to change the Common Law by Order of a Minister i.e. even if the Law Commission report is cherry picked and only partially implemented.

Their Lordships only got as far as Clause 1 in Monday, but Clause 3 was mentioned several times. The next session for this Committee is next Monday.

Similarly, the Police and Justice Bill only got as far as Clause 15 on Tuesday, with only one vote, which the Government won.
Tomorrow Thursday 6th might see the controversial amendments to the Computer Misuse Act. and the controversial UK-USA Extradition Treaty debated.

The tabled Amendments to the Computer Misuse Act modifications in Clause 41 and 42 now include:

The annual Intelligence and Security Committee Report, does its usual job of providing only the vaguest details about the running of the United Kingdom's intelligence agencies and security services. Neither the public, nor the intelligence agencies themselves are best served by so much secrecy and failure to get the answers to probing questions.

They give the impression that important questions of policy, which would not compromise tactical or operational secrets are not even asked, let alone answered.

Combined with the dubious media spins and leaks, is it any wonder that conspiracy theories thrive, and that few members of the public , especially those in, say the Islamic or Irish or the online communities, have any confidence that the intelligence services are doing a competent job, for the public good.

About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.

The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented, especially in these times of increased alert over possible terrorist or criminal activity. If the systems which should help to protect us can be easily abused to supress our freedoms, then the terrorists will have won.

We know that there are decent, honest, trustworthy individual politicians, civil servants, law enforcement, intelligence agency personnel and broadcast, print and internet journalists etc., who often feel powerless or trapped in the system. They need the assistance of external, detailed, informed, public scrutiny to help them to resist deliberate or unthinking policies, which erode our freedoms and liberties.

Email & PGP Contact

Please feel free to email your views about this blog, or news about the issues it tries to comment on.

Our PGP public encryption key is available for those correspondents who wish to send us news or information in confidence, and also for those of you who value your privacy, even if you have got nothing to hide.

We wiil use this verifiable public key (the ID is available on several keyservers, twitter etc.) to establish initial contact with whistleblowers and other confidential sources, but will then try to establish other secure, anonymous communications channels, as appropriate.

Current PGP Key ID: 0xE08E882B13FC89C which will expire on 30th September 2015.

You can download a free copy of the PGP encryption software from www.pgpi.org
(available for most of the common computer operating systems, and also in various Open Source versions like GPG)

We look forward to the day when UK Government Legislation, Press Releases and Emails etc. are Digitally Signed so that we can be assured that they are not fakes. Trusting that the digitally signed content makes any sense, is another matter entirely.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

Statewatch - monitoring the state and civil liberties in the European Union

The Policy Laundering Project - attempts by Governments to pretend their repressive surveillance systems, have to be introduced to comply with international agreements, which they themselves have pushed for in the first place

House of Lords - The Law Lords are currently the supreme court in the UK - will be moved to the new Supreme Court in October 2009.

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals under FOIA, DPA both for and against the Information Commissioner

Investigatory Powers Tribunal - deals with complaints about interception and snooping under RIPA - has almost never ruled in favour of a complainant.

Parliamentary Opposition

The incompetent yet authoritarian Labour party have not apologised for their time in Government. They are still not providing any proper Opposition to the current Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition government, on any freedom or civil liberties or privacy or surveillance issues.

UK Government

Home Office - "Not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes" - Home Secretary John Reid. 23rd May 2006. Not quite the fount of all evil legislation in the UK, but close.

NIR and ID cards

Stand - email and fax campaign on ID Cards etc. [Now defunct]. The people who supported stand.org.uk have gone on to set up other online tools like WriteToThem.com. The Government's contemptuous dismissal of over 5,000 individual responses via the stand.org website to the Home Office public consultation on Entitlement Cards is one of the factors which later led directly to the formation of the the NO2ID Campaign who have been marshalling cross party opposition to Labour's dreadful National Identity Register compulsory centralised national biometric database and ID Card plans, at the expense of simpler, cheaper, less repressive, more effective, nore secure and more privacy friendly alternative identity schemes.

CommentOnThis.com - comments and links to each paragraph of the Home Office's "Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme".

De-Materialised ID - "The voluntary alternative to material ID cards, A Proposal by David Moss of Business Consultancy Services Ltd (BCSL)" - well researched analysis of the current Home Office scheme, and a potentially viable alternative.

Surveillance Infrastructures

CameraWatch - independent UK CCTV industry lobby group - like us, they also want more regulation of CCTV surveillance systems.

Every Step You Take a documentary about CCTV surveillance in the Uk by Austrian film maker Nino Leitner.

Transport for London an attempt at a technological panopticon - London Congestion Charge, London Low-Emission Zone, Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on buses, thousands of CCTV cameras on London Underground, realtime road traffic CCTV, Iyster smart cards - all handed over to the Metropolitan Police for "national security" purposes, in real time, in bulk, without any public accountibility, for secret data mining, exempt from even the usual weak protections of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Eeclaim Your DNA from Britain's National DNA Database - model letters and advice on how to have your DNA samples and profiles removed from the National DNA Database,in spite of all of the nureacratic obstacles which try to prevent this, even if you are innocent.

Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair - the rich Uzbek businessman and his shyster lawyers Schillings really made a huge counterproductive error in trying to censor the blogs of Tim Ireland, of all people.

World's First Fascist Democracy - blog with link to a Google map - "This map is an attempt to take a UK wide, geographical view, of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

Georgetown Security Law Brief - group blog by the Georgetown Law Center on National Security and the Law , at Georgtown University, Washington D.C, USA.

Big Brother Watch - well connected with the mainstream media, this is a campaign blog by the TaxPayersAlliance, which thankfully does not seem to have spawned Yet Another Campaign Organisation as many Civil Liberties groups had feared.

Spy on Moseley - "Sparkbrook, Springfield, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. An MI5 Intelligence-gathering operation to spy on Muslim communities in Birmingham is taking liberties in every sense" - about 150 ANPR CCTV cameras funded by Home Office via the secretive Terrorism and Allied Matters (TAM) section of ACPO.

FitWatch blog - keeps an eye on the activities of some of the controversial Police Forward Intelligence Teams, who supposedly only target "known troublemakers" for photo and video surveillance, at otherwise legal, peaceful protests and demonstrations.

Other Links

Free Gary McKinnon - UK citizen facing extradition to the USA for "hacking" over 90 US Military computer systems.

Parliament Protest - information and discussion on peaceful resistance to the arbitrary curtailment of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, in the excessive Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 Designated Area around Parliament Square in London.

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UK Legislation

The United Kingdom suffers from tens of thousands of pages of complicated criminal laws, and thousands of new, often unenforceable criminal offences, which have been created as a "Pretend to be Seen to Be Doing Something" response to tabloid media hype and hysteria, and political social engineering dogmas. These overbroad, catch-all laws, which remove the scope for any judicial appeals process, have been rubber stamped, often without being read, let alone properly understood, by Members of Parliament.

The text of many of these Acts of Parliament are now online, but it is still too difficult for most people, including the police and criminal justice system, to work out the cumulative effect of all the amendments, even for the most serious offences involving national security or terrorism or serious crime.

Foreign Spies / Intelliegence Agencies in the UK

It is not just the UK government which tries to snoop on British companies, organisations and individuals, the rest of the world is constantly trying to do the same, regardless of the mixed efforts of our own UK Intelligence Agencies who are paid to supposedly protect us from them.

Presumably every mainstream media organisation, intelligence agency, serious organised crime or terrorist gang keeps historical copies, so here are some older versions of the London Diplomatic List, for the benefit of web search engine queries, for those people who do not want their visits to appear in the FCO web server logfiles or those whose censored internet feeds block access to UK Government websites.

Campaign Button Links

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

Cracking the Black Box - "aims to expose technology that is being used in inappropriate ways. We hope to bring together the insights of experts and whistleblowers to shine a light into the dark recesses of systems that are responsible for causing many of the privacy problems faced by millions of people."